Olive: The acclaimed debut that’s getting everyone talking from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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right yes, the continuity issues in this book are so damn obvious. it's been mentioned that Olive may need to get a flatmate to help pay the rent. but when Isla comes to stay, she has to get out the sofa bed? I went through this book mostly nodding because everything that is explored is relevant especially considering how women’s experiences are so affected by the patriarchal society we live in. But at the end of the day I feel like 90% of Olive’s problems could have been solved by speaking to her friends 👀 I was also leaning towards the feeling that the conversation felt outdated but I realised that that sentiment stems from the fact that my friends and I have never assumed each other’s position when it comes to motherhood, a topic that we explore every now and then (just to keep each other updated you know 😂) When I think that it won’t hurt too much, I imagine the children I will not have. Would they be more like me or my partner? Would they have inherited my thatch of hair, our terrible eyesight? Mostly, a child is so abstract to me, living with high rent, student debt, no property and no room, that the absence barely registers. But sometimes I suddenly want a daughter with the same staggering intensity my father felt when he first cradled my tiny body in his big hands. I want to feel that reassuring weight, a reminder of the persistence of life.

As a recent mum, phew, a lot of it caught me off guard. There's an almost ingrained guilt to pregnancy and motherhood, and a guilt about not having children, and here it was shown across a wide range of brilliant characters, all dealing with their own twist on the idea.I’d already read Emma Gannon’s The Multi-Hyphen Method, and followed her work from the early days of the “Girl Lost in City” blog, so I was interested to see what her first novel, Olive, would be like. The story is told from the perspective of Olive, a millennial journalist living in London whose life is at crossroads. As her university friends settle down and start to have families, she realizes she’s “different”: she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to have children. As their lives take different paths, tensions take hold, and Olive wonders what it is she really wants in life. suspiciously? As in, they’re fake? And you find it suspicious that she’s … pretending they’re not? Except I think this character is fully aware that her boobs look too perfect to be natural. Isn’t that surely, say, the point of getting a boob job? I dunno, I feel it’s more feminist to just not comment on people’s boobs, suspicious or otherwise. But let’s talk about the rep first! Olive is a 30-something powerhouse of a woman who works in a feminist magazine and loves meeting up with her friend group after work for dinner & wine. She is perfectly content with her life until her long-term boyfriend tells her that he is ready to start a family. But Olive doesn’t want kids. And even though this realisation doesn’t seem ground-breaking to Olive at first, she soon notices that her relationship and friendships are going to be turned upside down because of it. Everyone turns on her with the same offensive arguments that I have heard during my life. Her inner monologue, as we never hear from anyone else, is of a pretty dreadful human being. She moans when her friends are late but continually mooches around and turns up 15 minutes late to all of her meetings – including boasting that she’s so good at her job and so senior that she can turn up when she wants and no-one will challenge her.

Moving, memorable, and a mirror for anyone at a crossroads, OLIVE has a little bit of all of us. Told with humor and great warmth, this is a modern tale about the obstacle course of adulthood and the challenges of having—and deciding not to have—children. Olive is just figuring life out and sometimes it looks a little different to how other people see it. At the end of the day, just like in real life - it doesn’t matter, why’s it a problem. Just do you!! Emma started her career in digital marketing at agencies and then at Condé Nast as social media editor. She has been a columnist for The Times, Telegraph and Courier magazine on the topics of business, creativity and the future of work. She's jealous, judgemental and selfish towards her friends and those around her - snippy comments about Cec's luxurious house and baby shower, feeling put upon when helping elderly neighbour Dorothy, complaining that her sister, Zeta, isn't there for her because she's away doing charity work. Speaking of which, why doesn't Olive ever discuss childfree life with Zeta, who is 5 years older and seems not to have kids? One would think she'd be a great sounding board? Why does she keep hounding her poor three friends instead, who are all clearly are pro-kids? I found the expression of the various friends' prejudices very interesting. The sub-fertile friend who thinks her suffering must be somehow more noble and worth talking about than her newly single friend's loneliness and sense of loss. The general ganging up of the mums against the non-mum, the sense that Olive's life was somehow less valid and interesting in their eyes, her inability to talk about her broken relationship because her friends were so self-interested. All good valid discussions.Emma Gannon has written a humorous, searching, thoughtful and honest book about Olive's decision and how it impacts her life, her relationship, her friendships, particularly those with her three best friends: Bea, who has it all - the husband, the house, and 2.4 children (3 actually); Cec, who is pregnant with her first child; and Isla who is struggling with infertility and the impact it's having on her marriage. I loved that the book portrayed so many aspects of motherhood (and not wanting to be a mother). Bea had a family young, and has 3 kids. Isla has endometriosis (always good to have rep) and is struggling to have a child. Cec has a newborn and is struggling with being off work with a less than hands on husband. All the of the women have different circumstances which makes Olive's relationships with her friends a really interesting and emotional read. The debut novel about the life-changing choices we makeabout careers, love, friendship, and motherhood from bestselling UK author Emma Gannon. Please don't hate me for a 3-star. That's easily the highest I've given something in this genre in a long time. Olive is worth a read and could be a good choice for a book club - just don't be surprised if the discussion comes to blows and you end up with prosecco all over the carpet.

There are lot of nuanced perspectives, and you can really examine the characters. None of them are perfect, and at times all of them, including Olive, are frustrating and challenging, but that is the magic of a book like this. These characters are real, relatable, and honest.MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Leaving aside for a minute that Olive sounds like a baby-boomer, not a Millennial, what has she been drinking from that’s not a paper cup? Is she wistful for the days of Styrofoam? I am almost 33 years old and I am child free by choice. thought I was going to really like this. but I didn't. at all. here are the notes I wrote in my phone as I read this book in one sitting. I painted a picture of my Big Bright Future through the lens of an old Argos catalogue, and today I am inside that distant future; in the painting, living and breathing it. But I don't have the hand painted tea cups, or the navy blue patterned plates. I don't have a garden slide. And I don't have the baby either. When I first saw the synopsis of Olive, my heart filled with joy. Despite of my efforts to find books about women who choose to remain childfree, these stories are nearly impossible to come by. Instead, women without children are often villainized and portrayed as miserable, angry ladies who hate kids. This is also what the society at large seems to think about women who don’t want children; I’ve been told that I’m selfish or that I’m not a woman at all if I don’t want children. I have been told that I will sorely regret not having children, and most often that I will change my mind. Books about childfree-living are sorely, desperately needed. And I felt a little spark of hope when I saw Olive’s synopsis. I wished so bad that it was the book that I had been looking for! And although the rep turned out to be as meaningful as I wished, otherwise Olive was a painful read. And not in a good way.